Like the Spencer Mansion in Resident Evil, the USG Ishimura is as important a character to Dead Space as Isaac Clarke. In the first installment, the USG Ishimura is where almost all of Dead Space takes place, acting as a harbor for the Marker’s necromorphs when a search-and-rescue crew arrives at the plea of Nicole Brennan, Isaac’s girlfriend. The game is linear with explicit paths from beginning to end in each chapter, but EA Motive’s Dead Space remake uses new tools like the Intensity Director to make a substantial effort to give players an experience that will reinvigorate that of the original.
The USG Ishimura is now a seamless environment that players can apparently traverse from start to end, which is accentuated through the fact that the remake will allegedly have no camera cuts or loading screens. Moreover, each feature depicted for the Dead Space remake adds a new design mechanic, and as a result there may be fresh gameplay content for players to experience with alternate occurrences. There is a subtle feature that the Dead Space remake has included called the Intensity Director, and its potential seems remarkable in the game’s newly enhanced scope.
The Dead Space Remake’s Intensity Director Turns It into a Procedural Nightmare
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Senior Producer Philippe Ducharme introduces the Intensity Director during a segment of the Dead Space remake’s extended gameplay walkthrough. Though it has a technical and alarming name, the Intensity Director is described as a feature that generates new experiences for players as they maneuver through the Ishimura, and makes some intriguing suggestions about exploration in general.
The feature sounds like it is essentially a way to make repeated visits to areas on the Planet Cracker-class vessel a procedural nightmare, where there may be different enemies that appear and “the ambience and lighting may change.” It can only be imagined how frequently this must come into play, but Ducharme says that the Intensity Director “keeps the Ishimura unpredictable.”
Ducharme cites “additional tension and challenge” as a goal that EA Motive strives toward with the Intensity Director, and it will be interesting to see how big of an effect it has on keeping gameplay fresh. As players make their way through the remake, events that trigger may be the result of scripted encounters, but the Intensity Director ensures that there will also be random events triggering that players may not even be able to discern.
Dead Space Fans Should Expect the Unexpected in EA Motive’s Remake
If the Intensity Director manipulates environments and enemy spawns throughout the remake, fans would be right to abandon any expectations they have with regard to what occurs normally on the USG Ishimura. Of course, huge jump scares and other key moments will likely be reprised.
But because the Intensity Director makes intermittent changes to the USG Ishimura’s environmental atmosphere, there may be more jump scares with enemy ambushes than players remember. This feature will also hopefully result in frequent lighting changes, such as whole corridors suddenly losing power and leaving players in the dark, or leaving them to proceed precariously under the flickering of a damaged light source.
It may be too much of a stretch to assume that the Intensity Director could lead to moments where oxygen is sucked out of an isolated ship compartment players are exploring, but implementing zero-gravity traversal at random times would be incredibly immersive. The Dead Space remake looks more and more impressive with each new gameplay walkthrough that is shown, and features such as the Intensity Director will be exciting to experience in real-time.
The Dead Space remake will release on January 27, 2023, on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.